Edelweiss: Chronicle of a Del Mar Beach House, 1885 to Now

Juliana Maxey-Allison’s easy style makes this bite-aize California tale very readable and entertaining.

In the mid-1880s Jacob Taylor sized up the scrappy brush-covered site known then as Weed, and gambled that trains would bring people to this spot on the San Diego County coast of California. He envisioned an extravagant tourist destination, then built it, and awaited the new arrivals. The house at 227 Tenth Street was part of Taylor’s dream made manifest.

Julie Maxey encountered the sagging, slouching, peeling old Victorian beach cottage almost a century later and set about rehabilitating it. After several years away in New York City and then a return to Del Mar in 2004, she began to investigate the history of the house and the people who had lived in it.

Edelweiss: Chronicle of a Del Mar Beach House brings Del Mar’s first century alive and introduces some intriguing mysteries: How did the Edelweiss house acquire its name and its Swiss chalet details? Why were so many of the house’s owners women? Was the cottage really the 1920s hideaway of the famous Hollywood couple Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks? How did the racetrack and Psychology Today magazine shape the character of this unique Southern California town?